It's been more than four decades since the Civil Rights movement ended racial segregation in America. Yet few would say African-Americans are now fully integrated – or assimilated. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, African American writers talk about race, and how black history –...Read more
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Episode Archives
Political animosity between the right and the left is off the charts. Social scientists say we're living in one of the most polarized periods in history and that conservatives and liberals don't just disagree anymore. They hate everything about each other. It's time to de-...Read more
Noelle Howey got the shock of her life when she was 14. She found out her dad liked to wear women’s clothes. In fact, he really wanted to be a woman. So he re-lived his teenage years ... as a girl, just as Noelle herself hit adolescence. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge stories...Read more
Batman, Superman, the Green Lantern we all had our superheroes as kids. Maybe we still do today? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, SUPERHEROES. We'll celebrate Wonder Woman's 70th birthday with a look at her controversial new costume. We'll also explore the actual physics of...Read more
Gore Vidal has a special fondness for the Founding Fathers, especially George Washington. “The others were geniuses. He was not a genius” he says, but “he had a powerful character which got him through the revolution, since he was not much of a general. But he was a great leader.” We’ll talk...Read more
Chris Ayres never wanted to cover the war. He was perfectly content reporting on celebrity gossip in L.A. But through a twist of fate, he found himself embedded with Marines in Iraq, living in a Humvee and waiting for his death at the hands of the Republican Guard. In this hour of To the Best...Read more
Music and social change go hand in hand. We explore the secret history of protest music. Songs and social movements you might have missed -- from the early days of rock and roll to the non-violent hip hop message of FM Supreme.Read more
Reality is catching up to science fiction. But there are still new science-fiction writers who are thinking the unthinkable and daring to go beyond the limits of our imaginations.Read more
The past is nebulous - a place no one can go. When we try to get our bearings there, we often find more than one truth. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll go back to Vietnam with Senator Bob Kerrey. And, one woman pieces together her past in war-torn Liberia. Also, paying...Read more
Red roses, chilled champagne, a candlelight dinner for two. Who cares?!?
This is the 21st century. We’ve got 30 million potential dates online. We’ve got every imaginable type of pornography at our fingertips. Odds are each of us could hook up with someone new tonight.
...Read more
Are humans innately violent? If you stripped the civilization out of us, just how bad would we be?Read more
On February 13th, 1945 Kurt Vonnegut and other American POWs were hiding in a cellar during the firebombing of Dresden. They were remarkably lucky, as 135,000 people died that night. During the bombing one soldier said, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight?” Nobody laughed but, as...Read more
Picking up a bottle of wine for dinner used to be simple. It pretty much depended on how much you wanted to spend, since everything came from France. Not anymore! We'll look at what happened to the wine world in 1976, when wine from the Napa Valley won a blind tasting and turned the industry...Read more
Imagine a farm five stories tall, powered by the sun, watered by the rain. Cabbage and carrots, tomatoes and eggplant grow on living walls. Tens of thousands of fish swim in aquaponic tanks. In this hour, the urban farm of the future gets real. Also, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,...Read more
"Everyone is on the Internet but they're not all talking with each other. There are groups upon groups out there, but they don't talk to one another. So while the Internet brings everyone into a share space, it does not necessarily bring them together." -- David LynchRead more
Grim news from Africa is easy to find, but there are good things happening there too. The creator of the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency wants you to know all about them. He calls himself a Utopian writer. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll visit the real Botswana with...Read more
Wouldn't it be great if we could predict the future? We could invest wisely, prepare for social change, and have next season's fashionable footwear.
But in our accelerated world, it seems increasingly difficult to figure out what the next big thing will be. In this hour, are trends a...Read more
While the debate about how to fix America’s schools rages on, millions of parents have their own solution – opting out of the system. Homeschoolers in America usually make the choice for two reasons – to invest more religion in the curriculum or to embrace the vales of progressive education. ...Read more
Selling out: we talk with two people who’ve vowed never to sell out: Ralph Nader, and Congressman Joe Walsh. Walsh says the Tea Party must be the party of no compromise. Also, someone often accused of selling out: Shepard Fairey; he went from making street art to designing an iconic Obama poster...Read more
It's called the Turing Test, an annual event in which the most advanced computer programs try to fool a panel of judges into mistaking them for real people. And real people compete to try to win the coveted "Most Human Human Award." In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll meet...Read more
Contemporary nomads are primitive, tribal people who chase the seasons to fresh water and greener pastures. They’re not middle aged American women who’ve published scores of children’s books, or not usually. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we’ll meet Rita Golden Gelman,...Read more
Couples know the frightening statistic: 50 percent of today’s marriages will fail. And the real victims are the children. As they grow up they are more likely to be aggressive or depressed, end up in mental health hospitals, or get divorced themselves. In this hour of To the...Read more
Getting through winter requires mental and physical toughness, plus good central heating. But animals have amazing strategies for surviving conditions that make humans whimper. Today, winter survival strategies from our furred and feathered friends. What could we learn from a walrus who...Read more
George Orwell wrote "1984" in response to two of the reigning ideologies of his day - fascism and communism. Does his dystopian story of Big Brother and Doublethink still matter today? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll talk with actor Tim Robbins, who recently staged a...Read more